When Jack next opened his eyes, he was on a stretcher lifted by a couple of burly orderlies, the battle still raging around them. The machete-like weapon had been removed from his leg and thick folds of fabric were quickly being soaked through with his blood. Involuntarily, Jack started thrashing, howling in pain and trying to press his hands to his wound - it was the same leg, he vaguely realised, brow clouded with droplets of sweat, of the cut that Hoshe’a had stitched closed all that time ago.

Thinking of him made Jack shift as well as he could, head spinning with the sudden movement of searching his face out from the throng of others, vainly attempting to discern his dark palms from all the white-sleeved hands that passed around him; holding him down - when did he get to the hospital tents? - or tearing at the blood-soaked bandages, or flying like birds overhead, holding his face still and his mouth open and close, Iacobus, and it wasn’t water  nor wine but it slid smoothly down his throat. With it, moments later, came calmness, a respite from the sharp throb of his right leg. Hoshe’a’s name dropped from his lips though he found it hard to move his mouth - or anything at all.

His head fell back, limp. A cloth passed over his forehead. Eyes stared into his but they weren’t the oh-so-familiar black ones he longed to gaze into as he died - for surely he must be dying this time, his eyes drooping shut and the world slowly fading to black nothingness.

There was no intelligible world around him rising out of the clouds to meet him, after he returned to consciousness, hours later. His gaze was filled with an earthier white, that of linen tents put together and covered with animal fat to make them waterproof. To the side, a simple trolley rested in wait, carrying flasks of substances, many bandages and a tray of surgical equipment. Over him were sheets roughly sewn together, red at his lower half where blood seeped through bandages. Beneath him, a hard cot among hundreds of others. And at the foot of it slept Hoshe’a.

The boy was in an awkward position, back straining as he remained sitting on his wooden stool but bent over the bed, his head framed by his arms. The sleeves of his tunic were rolled up but bloodied and his hands were dirty too.

It was apparent that he’d been busy, like all the other medics: the cots neatly strewn across the medical tents were full as far as Jack’s eyes could see in the penumbra. It was late, he realised. The silence hinted at the finished battle, and the darkness spoke of how early it was, several hours before the Dawn was ready to spread her wings and bathe the land in her aureus light.

This had to mean they had won. The notion brought the battle back to mind - the shouting, the blood, the sharp pain in his leg. Thus Jack sat up carefully, slowly, mindful of the tingling of his flesh. He suspected the poppy liquor he’d been urged to drink hadn’t yet completely worn off. His movements, despite his caution, were awkward and uncoordinated; it didn’t take Hoshe’a long to jerk awake, eyes wide and body tense. There was something akin to a shadow about him, amorphous, jumping, there but not-there, like an invention from a twilit poem, ashes given form in the dying candlelight. The sight of him made Jack’s breath hitch, catching in his throat as he waited for Hoshe’a to run once again, to slip past him and dart into the darkness once more.

Slowly, the not-thereness dissipated while the boy’s body relaxed notably and he hopped off the stool, all but breezing around the bed to throw his arms around Jack’s neck and hug him tight.

It really couldn’t have been further from his expectations.

“I thought you might not wake up,” Hoshe’a breathed, sounding awfully relieved; wonderfully relieved. Jack’s heartbeat hastened, speeding as though to match the drum in Hoshe’a’s breast he could feel pressed to his chest. Before he could really bring himself to wrap his arms around the boy, Hoshe’a had drawn away ever so slightly. Their eyes met. Jack felt a lump form in his throat, his tongue tying itself into a knot he couldn’t hope to undo in time to say something, so Hoshe’a continued in his stead.

“I shouldn’t be so surprised,” he said, chuckling. “I made sure you couldn’t leave just like that. We all need a hero or two around.”

Jack was already smiling before his words truly registered, for Hoshe’a’s grin was contagious - and especially so when it was focused on him entirely, when he was so visibly and vibrantly glad that Jack was still alive. “I’d hate to disappoint,” he remarked, heat rushing to his face when the medic snorted out a breathless laugh. There was none of that shadow-likeness left on his features, which were all but absorbing the warmth of the single candle and reflecting it, Jack’s very own brilliant sun.

All was still around them, the silence engulfing every other patient, as though a bubble engulfed them and them alone; cut them from the rest of the world for those precious moments they could claim as solely theirs. Jack watched Hoshe’a as attentive as he could, commending all his little gestures to memory: the way he shrugged a single shoulder, how his teeth peeked past enticing lips when he smiled at nothing in particular, the contrapposto of his hip as he stood just a short distance away from the bed.